Platonic
by OP12
Summary: A WIP story/novel inspired by angst, theater, jazz, film noir, hardboiled detective fiction, and Lindsey Crews.


Chicago. Soon.

I was counting the five seconds when on '2' she came in, a 6-foot (actually, 5'3" disregarding the heels) miracle in subdued violet, the small, pedicured feet in purple 9-inch heels strangely at home on the uneven train cab door, a modest knee-length indigo dress swaying ever so slightly in the exchange of tube and Chicago air, a flash of blue as her eyes flickered once my way then turned left in the light with her petite, cream-colored face, framed by everday neck-length blonde hair, through the righthand part of which a purple butterfly clip edged slightly beyond her silhouette, apparent when the cab lights flickered for the moment as she turned left and took a pace and slowed, looking out the back cab windows as if she was looking for something she was surprised to see, glimpsed out of the corner of her eye. Maybe.

3, 4, 5. The doors slid shut and Elevated Train 191, piloted by a fairly new driver, bumped to its 20 mph roll. She hadn't taken a seat but wavered only noticeably in the sudden jolt and lightly grasped a pole a slight instant later. And I forgot her.

They say acquaintances aren't recognized outside of where they met, but if they are, it takes three. Seconds, minutes, hours, takes, breaths, whatever. And I spent almost the whole seven-minute ride between this station and the next arguing with myself that it couldn't possibly be her. I had met her a long time ago, or what seemed to be a long time ago, on a ship of all places. We had four days. Not together in a romantic sense, of course. She was just one of a handful of interesting people I had met on that ship that were around my age. Good people. Interesting people. People who made you forget about what y'may have just stumbled out of, quite unlike the bat in the usual expression. Good days. Odd days. Lonely days. Ironically, she was the girl next door, 'least in the hallway. She was Cinderella, never out at night. She didn't dance, talked a lot but didn't say much. Miss Mysterious. I didn't even know her actual name until several weeks later, mustering up the remnants of a nerve torn up by years of uncertainty regarding pretty much anything and actually attempting civility online.

Like any pen pal, things fragmented; me needlessly considering what I should and shouldn't say, how often I should remind her I exist, whether it was even worth a damn...the usual. In my teen years, I was Peter Parker, a smart nervous wreck with potential. So I was told. I know I didn't get superpowers. I did get a particular Asian heritage that has most everyone unfamiliar with it guessing what the heck I am, some even figuring me for Indian or Arabic. And the ignorant thought terrorist.

No. Then I thought I needed a girl. A girl was the last thing I needed. You don't realize until your last four years of childhood what a joke most of it is. And she wasn't too different. Like most brilliant girls I knew or came to know she had a boyfriend I never bothered to care about who she (at least) described as subscribing to that "emo" mentality. How they all got girls I don't know, won't ever know. She was sixteen. I was seventeen. In the five years since I came to know many girls with her exact (or considerably similar) appearance, her light voice (possibly soprano, wasn't sure if she sang), her movement. Her ridiculously cute dance to a pop song up to which point I had hated. The memory of how she looked, a miracle of violet in the subdued light, the only memory I'll accept of her on account of the one the morning after to be one I experienced in a depressive state. Neither, the dance, the look, the dress...isn't too hard to mimic or improve.

Heck, I knew one Miss Mysterious who tried killing me with a derringer-style pistol, tiny thing you could almost hide in your palm.

...no, this wasn't her, neither...

Drastically different personalities, those two. Once I told the ship girl she'd be the one to have film noir wrote about. The other pulled the derringer on me. Don't think either of them got it.

It's three seconds to the end of the seven-minute ride between Addison and Platonic, and in this time I've been musing on that girl and the name I forgot. The miracle in violet has been more or less staring out the back windows the entire time.

Two seconds. I realize she hasn't been staring out, but in. I see her face in the dirty-edged window and it's the saddest and most beautiful expression I have and will ever see, the kind only exchanged through reflections of strangers.

One.

She turns left and walks past me and I don't see her face, but a purple fade of movement, confident and purposeful limbs in a rare instant of weakness and distress.

It's a three second delay from open to closing at 3 AM in Platonic, the darkest and most regressed of Chicago neighborhoods since the 2nd Great Depression and the relative collapse of the national government. She is out into the wavering station lights in one, and doesn't slow. I hesitate at 2, opening my mouth just to test her name.

And at 3 I still don't remember her name.


End file.
